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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28748589">This Pain Wouldn't Be For Evermore</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/imissthembutitwasntadisaster/pseuds/imissthembutitwasntadisaster'>imissthembutitwasntadisaster</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Adventures of August and Inez [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Teenage Love Triangle Series - Taylor Swift (Song Cycle), folklore - Taylor Swift (Album)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Am I projecting onto Inez? Probably, Gen, Inez and August deserve to be friends, Inez and August deserve to be happy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 03:28:40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,063</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28748589</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/imissthembutitwasntadisaster/pseuds/imissthembutitwasntadisaster</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Inez has always been lonely, and her best friend Dorothea has apparently forgotten her.  But sometimes lonely women see other lonely women in the grocery line.  And sometimes friendships can come from the most unlikely of quarters.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Betty/James (mentioned), Inez &amp; August</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Adventures of August and Inez [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2107629</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>This Pain Wouldn't Be For Evermore</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It is often said that those who discuss primarily the lives of others have very little life themselves.  This, thought Inez bitterly as she stood in the grocery line, her basket filled with things she didn’t really need, was, if not true for others, at least true for her.  She had caught sight of Dorothea that morning riding around in her old flame’s truck and it had put her in a foul mood all day, though she wouldn’t admit it.  Inez hadn’t even heard she’d come home.  So the Diva cared enough about an old romance to catch up with <em>him,</em> but not her best friend from school, not the girl she had spent hours shrieking and giggling with in the hallways, on the bleachers, by the train tracks when they had snuck out after dark.  They had been close, really close, and then Dottie had followed her mother’s dreams and moved away and now, it was clear, those days meant nothing to her anymore.  They meant everything to Inez.  Everyone seemed so stuck in their past, but apparently never the parts with her in them.   </p>
<p>But let’s rewind, just for a minute, to give justice to the nosy, gossipy girl in an orange jacket.  It is an impossibly heart-breaking thing to be lonely, it is even worse to be a lonely child.  Inez had only ever had Dorothea, and she was out of school so much for pageants and parties that more often than not Inez ate alone.  There was no reason for this, no flaw in her existence, just that trick of fate that consigns some girls to corner seats and hidey-holes and others to glorious crowds.  The hollow feeling in her chest deepened each week, and black tar grew on her bones and seemed to make her invisible.  Everyone who faces this responds differently, and Inez responded by slipping through the cracks, making herself unheard, unseen, and then listening as if it were the only thing keeping her alive.  Perhaps it was.  No one cared enough to hear her when she spoke, so she whispered, spreading rumours, ideas, stories, some true, some almost true.  Other people’s lives, scattered to the wind.  There was only one story she wouldn’t tell, and that was Dottie underneath the bleachers.  She broke hearts as a teenager but none of them had anything to do with her.  She was never loved, and her own heart was too cracked already to ever be properly shattered.   </p>
<p>Dear reader, it is easy to hate Inez.  Many did.  Often young men and women went home declaring loudly and despairingly that she had ruined their lives (looking back from adulthood, they would realise she had ruined a few weeks, months at most).  But she was a <em>child</em>, and she was <em>lonely</em>, and those are the two most terrible states of all, and this at least meant people knew her name.  You do not have to forgive her, but please at least try to mourn her. </p>
<p>And now in the grocery store the throngs of people around her just made her feel like that child again.  Her best friend had forgotten her.  Tears began to well up in her eyes and she stared hard at the bread aisle to drive them back.  Dottie’s boyfriend hadn’t even been that good looking, she grumbled internally (he had, he was, just another lie).  She was alone.  Again.  At Christmas. </p>
<p>As she glanced around, looking for anything to distract herself with, her gaze fell on a woman about her age with soft red hair and a gentle, freckled face.  A woman <em>exactly</em> her age.  Inez remembered her well. </p>
<p>Poor August.  She had loved James.  Inez, who spend her life watching, had seen that very clearly.  She had loved James and James had never loved her back, and Betty had been one of the most beloved girls in school.  Everyone had rallied to her cause, whispering abuse and leaving the summer girl, the Other Girl, lost out in the cold, floundering in social oblivion.  As far as Inez knew she worked at the library now, keeping to herself as she had always done.  As Inez, in their last year at high school, had caused her to do. </p>
<p><em>She was lonely too</em>, whispered the voice in Inez’s head that noticed everything.  <em>She looks lonely now</em>.  It was true, there was the same ache in her eyes that anyone who has had to stand alone too young can recognize. </p>
<p>Now, Inez was in a foul mood, she had been all day, and she wasn’t a naturally kind person.  She certainly didn’t allow herself to feel remorse.  But she didn’t have anyone either and well, it was <em>Christmas</em>.  It’s not Christmas very often.  So she left the line and walked over. </p>
<p>“Hey, it’s August, right?” She knew it was.  August knew she knew it was.  “I was wondering, do you want to, I don’t know, grab something to eat some time?  We haven’t talked in forever.”  They had never talked.  There was no reason for her to do this.  Every instinct she had honed from years of hiding behind her hard, uncaring, safe persona was screaming at her to leave.  But August looked her in the eye and in that gaze there was recognition, recognition of what the other was feeling.  With a pang that came from nowhere Inez remembered that Betty and James had led the committee for decorating the town together that year and had received public acclaim.  People said they would be engaged soon.    </p>
<p>“That would be lovely, thank you,” smiled August.  She had dimples that made her look younger than she was.  “When are you free?”</p>
<p>There is a magnetism in lost little girls, a needle that points them to others with the same scars, with no one to turn them into beautiful designs.  And girls can be cruel, but women can be kind. </p>
<p>Twenty years from then August and Inez were still grabbing things to eat together, at the library, at the grocery store, at the Olive Garden in the mall.  They shrieked and giggled like little kids and the people who passed them on the street just shook their heads.  “The loudest women this town has ever seen,” some whispered but others shushed them quickly and smiled at the pair’s backs. </p>
<p>Even the gossips and the lonely and the lost deserve their happiness.     </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I just want Inez and August to be happy guys, I'm a simple women.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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